News tagged with planetary missions

NASA has declared full mission success for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). As a result of the mission, LRO has changed our view of the entire moon and brought it into sharper focus with unprecedented ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Maryland-led mission proposal know as Comet Hopper has been chosen to compete for final selection as a new planetary mission in NASA's Discovery Program. The team will receive ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has selected three science investigations from which it will pick one potential 2016 mission to look at Mars' interior for the first time; study an extraterrestrial sea on one of Saturn's ...

Scientists have determined that ESA's Rosetta mission needs to deliver its lander to a site in the southern hemisphere of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. A site in this region will be the safest and most ...

A new golden age of sailing may be about to begin - in space. Future missions to explore the outer planets could employ fleets of 'data-clippers', manoeuvrable spacecraft equipped with solar sails, to ship ...

The public can follow along with NASA on its journey of lunar discovery. On March 15, the publicly accessible Planetary Data System will release data sets from the seven instruments on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance ...

Nearly 40 years after the Apollo astronauts first brought samples of the Moon to Earth for study, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis are leading an effort to return to the Moon for samples ...

Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published tomorrow in Earth an ...

Haze in the early Earth atmosphere could have played a crucial role in the origin of life. By forming a protective shield, the haze would have safeguarded organic substances from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- There are so many stars in our galaxy that even if planets with complex life (animals and plants) are rare - say one for every billion stars - there could still be dozens here in the Milky ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since the launch of the NASA Kepler Mission earlier this year, astronomers have been keenly awaiting the first detection of an Earth-like planet around another star. Now, in an echo of science ...

Anyone who's vacationed in the mountains or lived on a farm knows that it's hard to get good internet access or a strong cell phone signal in a remote area. Communicating across great distances has always ...